


The Violin

by scarletseeker113



Series: The road onwards [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Reunion, coming home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2012-07-10
Packaged: 2017-11-09 13:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/456013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletseeker113/pseuds/scarletseeker113
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is just how I imagined Sherlock coming home. . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Violin

Mary’s walking down the aisle, God, she looks beautiful. Her white dress is billowing out at her waist, and she looks so small and fragile. Even now, John feels like he needs to protect her. He can’t help but smile, but there are tears in his eyes as well. because there is a gaping hole at his side. He can’t remember what is supposed to be there right now, but something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

Suddenly the smell of chlorine is invading everything. The air is wet and the chlorine is inside of him, pressing against his skin, getting under the vest that is strapped with semtex. 

When John looks up again, Mary isn’t there any more, and he feels a staggering relief. But someone worse has taken her place.

_Sherlock. . ._

The voice whispers in the back of his mind, and he knows that he has to protect Sherlock, every instinct he has is being triggered.

The red lasers that are dancing around on Sherlock’s chest make a fierce anger rise up in John. 

He 

Will 

Not 

Let 

Sherlock 

Die.

There’s a way out, there’s always a way out. 

“Sherlock, will you come?” The voice is deep, and pleading. “Please,” it adds. John turns around to see Lestrade there, and Sherlock is pointing a gun at him. 

“There’s been a third murder?” Sherlock asks.

His voice makes all the tension drain out of John. Proof that he is still alive. His heart is still beating.

Suddenly the bomb strapped to John’s chest doesn’t matter as much.

And then he’s standing on that damn street, and the bomb is still strapped to his chest. He is holding his phone up to his ear.

Sherlock’s voice is doing nothing to calm John now. 

“I’m sorry.”

_I’m sorry._

_I’m sorry._

_I’m_

_sorry. . . ._

The words are reverberating, and John can’t even think.

“ _SHERLOCK!”_

And then he falls.

Down.

Down.

Down.

John can’t hear him hit the pavement, but what his imagination conjures up is not comforting. He’s running around the building and he’s approaching the place where Sherlock lays, only it’s not Sherlock on the pavement.

Instead there’s a four poster bed covered in a blue comforter, and a small shape is curled up on the left side of the bed. 

“No,” John whispers.

But he can’t stop himself from approaching the bed, even though the bomb is still strapped to his chest, and he could be putting her in danger.

But he already knows what’s happening.

He reaches the bed and kneels down next to it, and Mary isn’t breathing anymore, her brown hair is spread across the pillow.

“Stage four cancer,” the doctor is saying across the bed, except it isn’t a doctor, it’s Moriarty in a lab coat. “We couldn’t do anything.”

When John looks back down he isn’t cradling Mary’s head anymore, he’s holding Sherlock.

And the blood from his smashed in skull is getting all over the bed. John can’t even breathe he’s gasping so much.

He wakes up screaming.

John puts a hand to his chest, and it meets only fabric. There is no bomb strapped to him.

Moriarty is dead.

Mary is dead.

Sherlock is dead.

John takes a couple of deep breaths and rolls over onto his side again. He will be okay. He will get through this. 

It doesn’t feel like there is enough air in the world at this moment, no matter how much he gasps, he isn’t getting oxygen.

He focuses and breathes slowly.

John is concentrating so hard that it takes him a moment to recognize that there are sounds of a violin being played. Bach, someone is playing Bach, the way Sherlock used to when John had nightmares.

Sherlock.

_Sherlock._

_Sherlock._

John is out of his bed, flying past the framed periodic table on the wall and into the main room of the flat in seconds.

He’s ignoring the pain in his leg. His limp can wait.

The room is dimly lit, the only light coming from a lamp in the corner. It makes everything look yellow.

There is a slim figure near the windows, playing the violin, his slim fingers moving with precision. 

He turns around.

The light is hitting Sherlock’s face oddly, so that the hollows in his cheeks and around his eyes are dark blue and his cheekbones and jaw are yellow. His eyes shine out, a whirlwind of color that John can never identify, and his lips look red. His face is full of contrasts.

“Am I dreaming?” John asks quickly.

Sherlock huffs and takes a step forward, swinging the bow to his violin around. “No,” he says, the same way he used to deny Mycroft’s cases in this very room. 

It is the voice he reserves for idiots.

John finds a smile creeping onto his face. He must be dreaming. But, as his dreams go, this is a very, very good dream.

Sherlock collapses into his chair with a sigh.

John perches on the edge of his chair cautiously, regarding Sherlock like he might disappear if he blinks.

“You’ve got questions,” Sherlock says, and John is thrown back to the very first day he met Sherlock, the first cab they shared and the first case they took together. 

“Not really,” John says, placing his hands on his knees.

Sherlock arches one eyebrow. “Really?” he seems genuinely surprised.

“Maybe I’ll ask you in the morning,” John says, still staring. “But not right now.” 

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “This is real, John. Honestly, what else could it be?” Sherlock is looking at him the way he looks at Anderson when he’s missed something obvious.

It makes John angry. 

“Shut up,” John says and he gets up, jabbing a finger at Sherlock. “Don’t make fun of me.” He pokes Sherlock in the chest for emphasis. At least, that’s his excuse, but really he’s just doing it to see if he feels solid, if he feels real. He does. It is not the dream-like insubstantial touch that is always wanting for more. It is real. “These have been the hardest years of my life, Sherlock, and you just show up expecting me to welcome you back into my life like nothing ever happened? You destroyed me.”

Sherlock is looking abashed. John quickly memorizes the face, because it happens so rarely. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, the words stilted in his mouth, like he is unfamiliar with their taste.

John sighs, and decides to be brave, he decides to let him out of his sight. It’s a stupid decision, he can admit it to himself, because when he turns around Sherlock will not be there anymore.

He turns away and walks to the kitchen. He puts the kettle on to boil and stares at it with his arms crossed.

Sherlock walks into the room and sits at the table.

“Why are you sleeping in my room?” Sherlock asks crisply.

John shoots him a venomous look, at least it’s supposed to be venomous. But really, he’s just drinking in the sight of him the way a dehydrated man gulps down water. “My leg. I can’t get up the stairs very well anymore.”

Sherlock looks at John’s leg, and John can almost see the wheels turning. He’s trying to figure out how to get rid of the limp again. 

John takes the kettle off and pours it into two cups, adding tea bags. He brings one over to Sherlock and they sit across from each other, blowing on the hot liquid.

“Moriarty threatened to have you killed.” Sherlock says abruptly. “And Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade.” He looks down at his cup. “That’s why I had to jump.”

“And you couldn’t contact me for three years?” John asks. “No note, nothing, couldn’t even call to say, ‘Oh hey John, I’m not dead, thought you ought to know.’” John is so furious, he can’t even see straight. “Damn it, Sherlock, it’s been three years!”

“Do you think this was easy for me John?” Sherlock yells back. “Do you think it was easy to watch you get married, and watch Mary die? Do you think it was easy for me to watch you visit both of our graves? Do you think it was easy for me to pass you on the street and not say a word, to give you no recognition? Knowing that if I revealed myself to you that one of Moriarty’s minions could kill you within a day? I saw you every week, and you looked like your soul had been drained out of you, and it was _my fault.”_ Sherlock’s eyes look mad and he’s practically spitting the words at John. He takes a breath and John can see him decide to calm down. He anger leaves his face and he says, almost calmly, “If you think any part of these last three years was easy, then you are mistaken. They were the hardest of my life.”

Sherlock gets up from the table and walks back to the armchairs, scooping up his violin on the way. He stands at the window and starts to play a song. John doesn’t know the name, or the composer. He just knows that this is the song Sherlock always played when he went into the long periods of depression that he was prone to after a case. 

John feels infinitely guilty that he has caused this performance.

John wanders back into the room, so that he can watch Sherlock play. He sits down on the couch, and sips at his tea.

“Did you tell anyone else that you’re alive?”

Sherlock’s face contorts into the expression that means he doesn’t understand what John is talking about. “Why would I tell anyone else before you?” 

John chuckles a little bit. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

“For what?”

“For being an idiot,” John says.

Sherlock looks at him blankly for a moment, then a smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. John watches as it spreads and then they’re laughing together.


End file.
